Dans les Yeux du Monde
by The Lovely Cynic
Summary: Lavi knew what it meant to be a Bookman. He had forgotten, though, somewhere along the line, how to be human....


**Dans les Yeux du Monde**

**Author's Notes: **Err, Lavi's character is really hard to write for me. So, I guess this is just a study of him, really, and his struggle between becoming a Bookman and being, well, human. Lots of emotional distress and such. :3 Enjoy!

Oh, and the title means **In the Eyes of the World**, by the way. XD

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The lonely sound of a quill on paper filled the late evening air. It scratched quietly, the surrounding silence causing the soft noise to increase in volumes. It clawed at the parchment like nails against wood. It left marks, words, dots and dark black ink blots; smudges and blackened fingerprints of the one writing it.

Lavi raised his hand to regard it. Worn... rough and stained black. Dull smelling ink seeped into the pads of his fingers, spots staining his palm. The entire side of his thumb was a gradient of black to pale white, the stark contrast striking against the flickering lights in the library.

It was times like these that the Bookman apprentice really thought. He could shed the fake skin that he wore during the day and get down to his own beliefs. His concerns could surface and bob above the duty of recording history for a split second to really become _known_. Lavi wondered, really _questioned, _if the skin he wore weren't becoming his own—if it were slowly seeping into his pores until it was there permanently, manifesting itself in his mind as a truth instead of a falsehood.

They were worrisome, these thoughts. If he became somebody—truly converted to that persona—then his years of efforts, of striving to be a Bookman, would be lost. The endless hours of records, of reading, of watching people _kill each other _for the sake of history, would be thrown away; wasted.

He felt himself pale as these thoughts rose. He couldn't allow that to happen. He couldn't turn his back on Bookman, on the Bookman society.... He knew too much. He knew things other people didn't, had seen things most would never even dream of seeing. He could only wonder what would happen if he didn't go through with his obligations to the Clan....

A shudder, cold and deep from somewhere buried inside him, shook his body. Fear. He wasn't just afraid of the Clan and what they would do, but was afraid of his own thoughts. How could he even think of leaving Bookman after everything they'd worked for?

He shook his head and tried to go back to writing, to doing what he was meant to. But the words were suddenly lost somewhere in his abysmal thoughts, stuck behind some wall that he could not be broken down.

He thought of his friends. Could he really call them that? He wasn't sure what else they would be, but truly hated to think of them that way. He felt like he was betraying somebody, or something. Bookman, perhaps, or... himself. To have friends meant having a heart and that _could not happen_. He had discarded his heart long ago; tossed it away like some broken thing he was never meant to have.

But was it really gone? Was it possible that he had just stored it away in some dark chest inside of his mind, never to be opened again? His heart was a mangled thing and it hurt to use—to really feel anymore. Something broken like that shouldn't be used if it didn't function properly.

But now... had he taken it out again without himself knowing? Had he put his heart to tentative use, as if testing it to see something? To see what it felt like to feel... to hate, to hurt, to love.... René Descartes once said, "I think therefore I am." But Lavi wondered, in this state, if thinking was the only thing that pertained to truly _being_. If you could think, but could not feel, were you truthfully in a state of being?

Philosophy was not something the redhead debated often, though.

Lavi remembered when he was a child. All his thoughts had been those of pain and hurt and sadness then. It ate away at his young body like a parasite, deteriorating him from the inside. Children are supposed to feel joyful, he thought. They are supposed to be happy, they are supposed to frolic with other children and play games and feel _happy. _Happiness was an emotion that rarely found him in those times.

He cast away his heart, then, to stop those feelings, thinking it would be better. He wanted to know the hidden history of the Earth, to know things others didn't.

But, in time, with that knowledge came a great weight. Knowing things others didn't put a great burden on one so young. To see humans destroying each other for reasons that really seemed _pointless_, to see good people kicked out onto the streets to die in the frigid months of winter.... It twisted the mind and soul to a point where neither were recognizable anymore.

Lavi pressed an ink-stained palm into his good eye, blinding himself from the world for a split second. The darkness was a welcome comfort, black and watery like the ink on his parchment.

He thought again on those in the Order. Allen, Lenalee, Komui, Kanda... what would they be considered?

_Ink on paper_.

A cold voice echoed in the back of his head, sharp like the blade of a knife. That... that was what they should be. They should be meaningless; just another page in history. But, with Lavi scooping out his heart from the cavern of his mind and cradling it, coddling it back to life like a newborn, they meant _more_. They were special, each in their own way.

Allen's admirable bravery with the way he held his head high, even when things seemed their most difficult. Lenalee's blind love for her friends that she considered family—so strong that you could almost _feel _the heat of her passion. Kanda and his cold exterior, though his caring for others ran deep through his system....

Everyone was more than just ink. They couldn't be scratched off and blotted out from Lavi's memory, for Lavi was growing a _heart_. And once something imprints itself on the _heart_, it can never be erased. Could he still be Bookman with these people—his _friends_—marked permanently in his being?

He stopped there. He could not think things like that.... He picked up shards of his thoughts and locked them away in the same spot that he kept his heart. He knew, though, that simply ignoring this would be impossible. Eventually, like his heart, the thoughts would escape. They would run rampant and invade his mind and soul, searing him with the pain of _doubt _in himself.

But until that time... he would try. He would try to stay a Bookman. He would try not morph into something that couldn't be controlled by logic, reason or history....

Human.

---**End.**


End file.
